The Election Heist

by Kenneth R. Timmerman

  “Amen,” they said.

  Erins filled them in on his discussion with the state’s attorney.

  “So he’s imposed a gag order,” Gail Copeland, his colleague from the Republican Lawyers Association, said.

  “That’s right. Gordon is not allowed to speak in public—or theoretically, in private either—about the risk-limiting audit or the results.”

  “So it’s as if it had never happened,” Gail said.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Can’t we petition the Governor to order a recount?” Gail wondered. “I mean, for crying out loud, he’s a Republican.”

  Aguilar exchanged a glance with the Crocodile. “I’ll go out on a limb and make a prediction,” he said. “Governor Huber may be a Republican, but he walks two paces behind the Senate Majority leader down in Annapolis. He wouldn’t even endorse me during the campaign. He won’t lift a finger now. He’s a fox. Congenial, but cunning.”

  “It’s true,” the Crocodile said. “You’ll get no support from that quarter.”

  “What about all your supporters?” Camilla said. “All those thousands of volunteers we recruited. We could bring an army into the streets. All you have to do is say the word.”

  “We’re not Antifa,” the Crocodile said.

  “Antifa doesn’t have a monopoly on street protest,” Aguilar said.

  “No. But it’s not the Republican way.”

  “Oh, come off it, Ken! There is no Republican way. Trump would do it!”

  “He hasn’t yet.”

  Why was the Crocodile getting so defensive, Aguilar wondered?

  “That’s because he hasn’t needed to,” Erins broke in. “Do you have any idea how many lawyers have descended on Florida to work this thing?”

  He gestured toward the TV, which was on mute. It was showing live footage of the paper ballots running through one of the giant tabulators.

  “All those people whose faces you can’t see are lawyers. Theirs and ours. And it’s the same thing in all the big counties that haven’t finished the recount.”

  “We have no legal basis to file a recount petition now that Montgomery County has certified the vote,” the Crocodile said. “Isn’t that right, Gail?”

  She shrugged, unsure.

  “You don’t, yet,” Erins said. “Gordon, tell them what you just told me.”

  And so Gordon told the story of his counterpart at the Montgomery County board of elections who had been contacted over the secure server by Eric Figueroa from Dominant Technologies.

  “He pretended to be the tech in charge of sending out the latest patch. The Montgomery County guy fell for it, downloaded the patch, and installed it into his scanners and tabulators. That’s why, when I brought in a tabulator from Carroll County that hadn’t been infected with the patch, we got the correct vote count.”

  “Who knows about this?” the Crocodile asked.

  “Just the five of us. And whoever ordered Figueroa to send the malware.”

  “If you know an honest reporter in Washington, DC, give it to him,” Gail suggested.

  “Assuming Figueroa is a real person and can be located,” Erins said.

  “Don’t do it, boss. Your fingerprints will be all over it,” the Crocodile said.

  Aguilar took Gordon aside and asked him to tell him as much as he knew about Figueroa and to provide any documents he had about the patch. He had an idea whom they could approach—not because he was honest. But because he was probably involved.

  59

  Aguilar called Jack Riley, the son of a Fox News anchor he had gotten to know up in New York who was now the network’s chief congressional correspondent, and laid out the story. He promised to get him a copy of the incriminating email so he could run a trace and call the company for comment. He was just a kid—couldn’t be more than twenty-five or twenty-six—but he was sharp.

  “You realize the email’s probably a dead end,” he said.

  “You’re right,” Aguilar said. “The links have already gone dead.”

  “But maybe we can do an archive search on that FTP site. Even if it was shielded behind a VPN, there might be something. I know a guy who’s pretty good at that.”

  He thanked Aguilar for the lead and promised to get back to him with what he found out.

  Aguilar’s next call was to Clifford Lucas, the reporter from the Legal Times who had tipped his hand at the press conference in front of the board of elections. He was the one who had suggested that Gordon’s risk-limiting audit might violate Maryland statute—the precise allegation that had led to his arrest. It was too specific a claim to be based on intuition or even a good knowledge of the law.

  Lucas pretended to be apologetic.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your guy,” he said.

  “If you mean the kid from the board of elections, he’s not my guy.”

  “It’s just, I’ve been doing these kinds of stories for years, and it leapt out at me.”

  “You’re a smart guy,” Aguilar said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “So why are you calling me?” Lucas said. “The guy’s now out on bail from what I understand and is going to cop a plea.”

  “I just got a call from a reporter from Fox News who apparently has been following the story.”

  “Okay.”

  “He thinks there’s more to it.”

  “Like what? Some kind of conspiracy at the FBI? Fox loves that kind of thing.”

  “No. He didn’t mention the FBI. He was asking me for comment on Dominant Technologies.”

  “The voting machine manufacturer?”

  “The same.”

  Lucas might think he was smart, but Aguilar was an old pro. He actually enjoyed stringing it out, leading him along by the nose.

  “It seems there was malware in the patch.”

  “You mean, like a software patch? Don’t they send them out all the time? Aren’t they checked and triple-checked by people who’ve been cleared by the FBI?”

  “That I don’t know,” Aguilar said. “I’m no expert. But I’m sure you can find out. It seems that Fox has the name of the guy who sent out the bad patch and they’re going after him.”

  The line went suddenly dead. It didn’t cut off—Aguilar could see they were still connected. But Lucas went silent for nearly a minute, as if he had put his phone on mute.

  “Sorry about that,” he said when he came back on. “I had another call coming in. So do you have the name?”

  “He mentioned it to me, but you know I can’t share that. It’s pushing it right up to the edge giving you a tip-off like this.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I get it. Thanks,” Lucas said. He rang off with Aguilar and returned to the other call.

  “So what are you offering me?” he said. “That’s big time.”

  “You just get me that name, boy. Then we’ll see. It ain’t worth nothin’ without a name.”

  As soon as Granger hung up with Lucas, he rang Navid on the secure line. He was seething, but not with anger. Fear gripped his stomach like a hand slowly clenching into a fist.

  “Do you know this guy at Dominant Technologies?”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  Granger went to his main screen and clicked on the VPN icon. “It says Australia.”

  “And you dialed in on the blue line?”

  “Of course. Can’t you see that?”

  “I like to double-check. So. Yes. Of course, I do. His name is Eric Figueroa.”

  “Who is he when he’s at home?”

  “Hahahahaha! You’re a smash-up, Granger.”

  “Navid, get serious. They are onto him. This is for real. They’ve got a Fox News reporter trying to contact him.”

  “Good luck on that. Hahahahaha!”

  “What do you
mean?”

  “Eric Figueroa, c’est moi, baby.”

  “You don’t work at Dominant Technologies.”

  “Well, like duh.”

  “So how can you be Eric Figueroa?”

  Navid put on a fey accent. “He’s just one of my many online personalities, sweetie. You should get to know some of the others.”

  Granger was doodling on his legal pad. He had made a big circle, then drawn smaller concentric circles inside it, and now wrote “Navid” inside the innermost circle, the bull’s-eye.

  “I need to know what our exposure is,” he said.

  “We’ve got a backdoor man. He lets me in.”

  “So now there’s two of you? Is there any way they can link you together?”

  “Are you kidding? Hahahahaha! Dude, it’s like I’ve been telling you. Navid is the man. Navid delivers. Navid disappears like he was never there.”

  That wasn’t good enough for Granger. If Fox News got hold of the story, especially during the recount, other networks were going to smell a rat. It was only a matter of time before someone at the FBI or DHS started asking questions their guys couldn’t shunt aside.

  “I think you should start destroying any trace of this operation.”

  “You really do underestimate me, Granger.”

  “What if the FBI gets a search warrant and descends on your place?”

  “I thought that was your job, keeping them away.”

  “Just sayin’. Be prepared.”

  “Even if they did, those Klondikes would never figure it out.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Granger said. “And your backdoor man. It’s time to make him disappear, too.”

  “That’s harder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s right at the top.”

  “Oh, crap,” Granger said.

  If that was true, they had a real problem. A lower level official could be fired, or go on medical leave, or get transferred to another department, whatever. But someone at the top was visible. Worse, they most likely weren’t an operative. Which meant, if squeezed, they’d get cold feet. They had too much at stake. They’d rat. And then it didn’t matter that Eric Figueroa was Navid’s fiction and couldn’t be located. Eric Figueroa was Navid. And they’d find out because the backdoor man would tell them.

  The time had come to pull the plug.

  Granger took the SIM card out of his phone and, using an empty bottle of Maker’s Mark, smashed the screen and the guts of the phone on the kitchen counter of his suite. Sorry, Agent Jones. I left that phone on the roof of my car and it got run over. He’d take the pieces later and dump them into the Intracoastal.

  60

  Governor Norton read a statement announcing the new rule issued by Secretary of State Shelley Hughes-Jackson at a 1:00 PM press conference at elections headquarters in Tallahassee that Friday.

  “We already have results from the overwhelming majority of Florida counties in the presidential election and fully expect these results to be certified when the county boards meet tomorrow morning; however, in a half dozen of our largest counties—Orange, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach—the recount has been slowed by the relentless challenge of so-called out-stacked ballots. These are ballots which, for various reasons, cannot be read or counted by the automated tabulators. It is important that Floridians understand that these ballots constitute a very small percentage of the ballots that need to be counted—in most cases, less than one-fourth of one percent.

  “In the interests of comity, and of ensuring that the votes of all Floridians get counted, the secretary of state this morning issued an interim rule setting aside all out-stacked ballots so they can be counted once the main recount is finished and the results known. As is their right, the Tomlinson campaign has sought an injunction of this rule, which we have now defended successfully before the Court of Appeals. So as of this moment, the recount will proceed without interruption.”

  The room exploded as reporters shouted out their questions. Norton stepped back from the microphone for an instant to whisper something in his secretary of state’s ear and, looking somewhat amused, allowed the chaos to subside.

  “That feels better now, doesn’t it?” he said with a chuckle. “So first, let’s hear from the Miami Herald.”

  “Governor,” a female reporter began. “How can you continue to conduct a recount under the supervision of your secretary of state, whose husband we learned this morning has been taken into custody in Miami on charges of alleged rape? Do you still have confidence in Ms. Hughes-Jackson?”

  Norton nodded. “She’s standing right here next to me, as you can see. So, yes I do.”

  Next, he turned to Dean Estrada of the Tampa Bay Tribune.

  “As you know, Governor, the entire Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area falls within those counties that still have to report. What is your expectation for when they should be able to finish the recount and get to these disputed ballots?”

  Norton deferred to his secretary of state.

  “Well, Dean. The tabulators we have imported from Nebraska and other states, which as you know are identical to the ones certified for use here in Florida, can operate at very high speeds if they are allowed to run without the constant interruptions we’ve been seeing over the past twenty-four hours. So we expect all of the six counties—possibly with the exception of Miami-Dade—to complete their ballot run by 7:00 or 8:00 PM tonight. That leaves all day tomorrow for the lawyers to dispute the out-stacked ballots before the counties certify their results on Sunday morning.”

  The room again erupted into chaos as reporters shouted questions. Norton held up a hand and turned to his secretary of state to answer.

  “No, I don’t have a hard count as of yet of the out-stacked ballots. But as the governor said, our ballpark estimate as we look at the numbers from the counties that have reported so far is that they will be less than one-fourth of one percent, which does not meet the threshold for a manual recount, as you know.”

  “So you’re just going to discard all those votes?” the reporter shouted.

  “I didn’t say that. Our counties will have a full twenty-four hours to look at them one by one, and I fully expect they will do that and meet early on Sunday morning, as required by law, to certify the results.”

  Norton returned to the podium and held up his hand for the reporters to quiet down.

  “There is one more paragraph I have to read to you from my prepared statement, and I find it very curious that none of you were at all interested to ask the question. That relates to the results.”

  He could see the NBC national political correspondent already into her stand-up at the far end of the room, totally uninterested in the facts he was about to release.

  “In the sixty-one counties that have completed their recount so far, forty-five are now reporting significantly different numbers than on election night. When combined, the clean retabulation of the paper ballots found that President Trump won significantly more votes than reported on election night. In some cases, this meant that Governor Tomlinson still came out ahead in that county, in other cases not. But when averaged out state-wide, it puts the president ahead by a three-percent margin so far. While we must await the results from the six remaining counties, if that tendency is confirmed, it means that the president will have won Florida by approximately 276,000 votes.”

  @realDonaldTrump: Bombshell press conference from Gov Kirk Norton. With all but 6 of Florida’s 67 counties now reporting real results, Trump is winning by 3% statewide. Thank God for paper ballots! We need this in every state in America!

  Granger looked at the tweet and shook his head. You fool, he thought. If you only knew.

  61

  For Congressman Hugh McKenzie, the ten days since the election had gone by with agonizing slowness. At every momen
t, he had expected a knock on the door, an unexpected visitor, bringing bad news. He nearly lost it the day his opponent held that press conference calling for a recount in Montgomery County. He locked his door, turned on the TV, and replayed it again and again. His wife, Willie, was the only one who dared interrupt him. She peeked around the door and immediately saw what was going on. She let herself in then carefully closed the door behind her. He jumped.

  “I thought you were the FBI!”

  “Grow a pair,” she told him. “You’re playing with the big boys now. You should be happy.”

  “But what if they find out? They’ll arrest me!”

  Of course he had told her about Granger’s “program.” At least, he had told her the little that he knew, and she agreed, neither one of them needed to know anything more. That was how Washington worked.

  “You don’t know anything about the manipulation of voting machines,” she’d told him. “Anyone in this office can testify that you can barely get the DVR to tape a show, let alone format a Word document.”

  “They’ll know.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  For days, McKenzie remained glued to the TV in his office, his door closed. But after the Norton press conference on Friday, he washed his face, straightened his tie, and had Willie crack open the outside door of his office suite to see if any reporters were outside. The corridor empty, they took the elevator down to the Rayburn basement, where they stepped into the Members-only subway car to the Capitol Building.

  They were headed to the ornate office suite of Majority Leader Gus Antly, with its spectacular view of the National Mall. “I hope it’s whip,” Willie whispered as they waited in the anteroom. She would give anything for him to become majority whip—in effect, Antly’s immediate deputy, the number three person in leadership.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” he whispered back.

  After aides brought them Diet Cokes and water, the South Carolinian whisked them into his private office.